


As We Lose the Lark in Heaven

by reine_des_corbeaux



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Accidental Incest, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Hand Kink, M/M, Memory, Ominous Foreshadowing, Parent/Child Incest, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Referenced Arthur/Guinevere, Referenced Arthur/Lancelot, Shame, Tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:40:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/pseuds/reine_des_corbeaux
Summary: It wasn't meant to be like this.
Relationships: Mordred/Arthur Pendragon (Arthurian)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	As We Lose the Lark in Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



It’s May in the greenwood, and there are blossoms on the trees, a springtime snow of white petals on the morning air. There will be tournaments in the afternoon, when the sun grows thick and golden, the indolent light stretching over swords and fantastical helmets, and he, presiding over it as king, will have to stand up and hope that his knights can still see the youth they pledged themselves to all those years before in the man who leads them now. 

Arthur misses youthful May mornings more than anything as he goes grey, gets slower. He misses riding his horse through the green spring air, through the merry morning and the merry Maying. But most of all, he misses that feeling of boundlessness. He misses who he was in the early days of his reign, before life became one long sameness of quests, tournaments, and always the disquieting fear that he has not done enough, or that he has done too much. Fortune’s wheel always turns. The spring never lasts, no matter how much we will it to. 

It has been a pleasant week of tournaments and games as of late. The borders have been quiet. The kingdom has been peaceful, and all the little petty kings at rest. There’s talk of another quest, perhaps for the Grail. Quests had excited him once, when he was younger, when May mornings were spent in the greenwood with Guinevere (or earlier, with Lancelot, and it’s a bitter thing to love two people more than you can stand, and know that God and the world and your throne must make you choose between the two, and so you lose them both). But here he is, alone. There’s no pressure against Arthur’s shoulder where Lancelot might’ve leaned his firm, battle-strengthened weight as they watched the sunrise climbing through the finger-branches of the trees in a golden aureole. He looks down and does not see Guinevere’s red hair loose upon his knees as she lies in his lap and watches the light in the greening leaves. It is a beautiful May morning and Arthur, King of the Britons, sits alone until there’s a rustling in the leaves. 

The young man who bursts through the underbrush seems startled to see Arthur sitting alone. He draws back, a curtain of dark hair, a brownish auburn in the morning light, obscuring his face. 

“Don’t hide,” Arthur says. “It’s a fine May morning.” 

The young man looks at him, brushes his hair aside, and Arthur sees him fully. Pale, pointed face. Freckled nose. Mouth pressed in a nervous line. There’s something of a hedgerow fox in his look, all apprehension and cleverness behind dark eyes. He looks young, and he looks familiar. Hesitantly, he approaches Arthur. 

“Do I know you?” Arthur asks. 

The young man looks as if he wants to say something, but all he does is nod gently, and Arthur remembers, or at least thinks he does. He must have been some young knight at the tournament. 

“I’m called Mordred,” the young man said, or Arthur thinks he says, because the playful breeze takes his words away and sends them dancing in the morning air. Odd name, that, and oddly familiar. It looks as though he wishes to say more, but his lips stay pressed shut, and then he opens them again. “I’m a knight.” 

He looks so young, so lost, and Arthur motions for him to sit. He remembers being Mordred’s age, with a sword too long for him, and all the world’s ambitions on his shoulders. Arthur had friends then, but as for mentors, once he was king, there was only Merlin. He knew loneliness too well in those days, even with Lancelot at his side, the best friend or more-than-friend he’s ever known. The crown places a heaviness on one's shoulders, strips joy and connection all away, like a knife strips skin from flesh. 

Mordred sits down on the grass, stretches his long legs, licks his lips as if he wants to speak, his nervous eyes flickering. 

“I’ve wanted,” he says to Arthur, “to meet you for a long time.” 

Arthur gets that often from starry-eyed squires and young knights. He’s used to it. But there’s something different about Mordred. He’s familiar, with his fox’s face, his knowing eyes. It must be from the tournament. He must have conducted himself well, and earned some notice. 

“Well, you’ve met me,” Arthur says. “The king himself. And your thoughts?” 

“You seem more, and yet less.” 

“More what?” 

Mordred looked away. 

“More and less than I expected. You looked so bright at the tournament, like everything I imagined when my mother and my foster-parents said your name. Beautiful and gleaming in the sun, with the queen and all your knights by your side.” 

“And less?” Arthur presses further. 

“You’re sitting here, with me, talking to me like I’m just a person, not a young knight you’ve never met before today. You invited me to join you under a tree on morning in May as if it were nothing to you. And yet you’re king. Maybe it’s true after all.” 

Arthur looks at him again, and thinks that in his face, he can still make out some resemblance to someone in the past. Perhaps he sees Lancelot as he was years and years ago. Perhaps something in Mordred’s wary calmness brings Guinevere to mind. Or, perhaps, it’s only a reflection of a fox he saw this morning, bright-eyed and curious in the early light. 

“What’s true?” Arthur asks, wondering if he should mimic his foster-father, throw in a faux-paternal “my boy” or something else to put Mordred at ease. 

Mordred turns away, and Arthur sees a pale cheek flush beneath the curtain of his hair. 

“Nothing.” 

And Arthur understands. He understands, because he was once a young man who felt everything strongly, too strongly, and he is about to reassure Mordred, and tell him gently that this cannot be, but Mordred leans in and presses a dry, chaste kiss to his lips. It’s just a brush of skin on skin, and Mordred draws back quick as the spring breeze, springs to his feet, and turns to run. 

Perhaps it’s something in the May air that causes Arthur to stand up, and call after him. 

“I have not dismissed you!” 

Mordred stops, back still to his king, and Arthur walks up to him, against his better judgement, places his hand on Mordred’s shoulder. 

“Meet me tonight,” he says. “Let no one see.” 

***

The bed’s a large one, and the hangings are rich, the bedclothes warm. Arthur sits upon it, hoping that Mordred fled the court after the morning’s aborted tenderness, so that he need not reconsider, and yet also need not sin. He does not know where his knights have gone, where Lancelot and Guinevere might be. For the second time today, Arthur is utterly alone, and he revels in the silence until the door opens. 

It’s all a blur from there, once Mordred enters, neither of them speaking as they throw themselves upon each other with no time for thought or for regret. He didn’t notice, in the forest, how beautiful Mordred is, how much he looks like some fierce creature of the forest or the wild shore. Arthur longs to see him fight, wonders how he’d look if he really watched him with sword in hand. As he strips Mordred’s tunic from him, he can feel the wiry, twitching strength beneath his hands and in the clumsy kisses Mordred presses to his lips. 

Arthur berates himself for haste. He’s not a young man any longer, too old for flings and assignations. It’s funny, he thinks, that he seems to have done it all backwards-- deep love as a youth (but for the one mistake, the hidden shame, Morgause’s laughter as she told him she knew all along), and this impulsive fancy as a man. His own tunic falls to the floor in a heap, and before he knows it, Mordred’s pushing him down onto the bed. The rope frame creaks with his weight, and he’s surprised at how quickly he’s been overcome. 

Mordred kisses like it’s a form of war, hungry, clumsy, fierce. His teeth nick Arthur’s lip, and Arthur draws back, placing calm, commanding hands on Mordred’s shoulders. 

“Here,” he says. “Let me.” 

After that, it’s easy to shift positions and to get Mordred up against the pillows, his dark hair spreading across white linen in tendrils like dark flames in the low rushlight gleam, his freckled skin shimmering with sweat. Arthur stops to admire him, and then grabs his hands. Mordred starts. 

“Shhh. Which one’s your sword hand?” 

“Left.” 

Arthur takes Mordred’s left hand, and kisses the palm and each of the hard calluses left by the work of battle, gently mouthing over the roughened skin. Mordred’s breath catches as he does so, as Arthur kisses each of his fingertips. 

“A blessing from your king. May your hand be swift, quick, and clever in battle,” he whispers, looking up, and Mordred grabs him again, still trying to kiss as fiercely as he can, urgency apparent in every uneven movement. 

Arthur grabs his hand again, presses another kiss to Mordred’s palm, this one quicker and lighter, as if he could give this young man all the will he needs to fight well in his battles to come. He follows it with more gentleness, blessing each finger with his lips. Mordred gasps again, a drawn-out sound more like a moan. 

“It’s not enough,” he says, his voice hazy with arousal. “I want--” 

The oil, discreetly placed beside the bed, is already on Arthur’s fingers, and he touches Mordred gently with his free hand, and Mordred follows his touch, arches his back and raises his hips, hasty and unpracticed in his movements. Arthur slicks himself, kisses Mordred gently again, and slips a finger inside the tight heat of him. 

Time quickens after that, more fingers, more touches, more moans and grunts from the both of them, and before he knows it, Arthur’s lined himself up and plunged deep into Mordred’s body, thrusting into the warmth. How long has it been since he’s done this, showed love with bodies and not only with kingly words, or listened to the rising sounds of a young man near the edge? He thrusts more wildly than before, growing erratic as he quests forward towards the end. 

Beneath him, Mordred’s flushed, beautiful, and oddly quiet. His hands clench at the sheets below him, and his cock is hard and dripping. With one hand, Arthur reaches to attend to it with his slick fingers, and Mordred makes a sound at last. It’s a moan, wrenched somewhere from deep within him, and the sound drives Arthur to the edge. 

Mordred spills in his hand with a sob of pleasure, and then, as Arthur’s thrusting forward, nearing his completion, he moans out a single, lust-strangled word. 

“Father!” 

Arthur nearly doesn’t hear, but his brain forms the syllables into something recognizable, and the shock, as hard and sharp as steel, falls heavy on his spine as he spends at last inside his long-forgotten son, the son who should have perished at his order years before. 

***

After, Arthur lies beside Mordred in the bed, shocked and numb, still woozy with the remnants of his horrified arousal. Mordred says nothing. He’s still beautiful, there in the guttering, sinister light. but Arthur can’t help but shudder. No man could do elsewise. The lust mixes with revulsion as he looks again at Mordred. He can see it now, that familiarity he couldn’t place. He has Morgause’s hair, with the dark flames hidden in shadows, only to be revealed in light. He has her pale, pointed features and clever eyes, her long, delicate hands. Arthur doesn’t know how he could have failed to notice it before, how clearly his sister is written in every angle of Mordred's face. 

Suddenly, Mordred laughs. It’s a harsh bark of laughter, and it catches Arthur by surprise.

“She was right!” he howls. “Right the whole time. I knew it, and I didn’t want to know it.” 

Arthur wants to place a hand on his shoulder, but his heart recoils in shame. He cannot touch his son, for what happened last time? Only madness. Only lust. 

“You cannot be my son,” he says. “I don’t have one.” 

Mordred laughs again, but his eyes are streaked with tears.

“You tried to kill me, and I still thought ‘maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he chose to set me out to sea in a moment’s madness, shame at what he did with my mother, and when he meets me, he’ll love me like his son.’ I was so _stupid_!” 

And then, Mordred’s sobbing, and Arthur can do nothing but sit and watch him weep like a fountain, overbrimming with tears. Despite his revulsion, his knowledge that this is his son, that for the second time in his life he has committed incest, and in circumstances all too similar to these, he puts his arm around Mordred’s lovely shoulders, and lets him shake with tears for a moment. 

Mordred pushes Arthur off. 

“Don’t touch me!” he hisses. “Don’t- I-” 

He blushes, or perhaps his face is simply blotchy with rage. Arthur says nothing, does not touch him again, lets him wait and ride out another round of silent sobs. 

“I really thought you’d recognize me,” Mordred says at last. “You’d say ‘welcome, son.’ And then I saw you, and you looked just how a king should look, and you were kind like a father, and you were-” 

He claps a hand over his mouth, unable to say the rest, and Arthur cannot think of a proper thing to say to him in return. They sit in silence for a moment, the room suffused with chill, the rushlights guttering out. 

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says at last. “I wish I could have been everything you wanted. Maybe I could be, though, still. Stay at court. Be one of my knights. We won’t speak of this again. And I'll atone for everything.” 

He tries to think of other things to say to break the chill and heavy gloom. Merlin told him that a child born on May morning would be Arthur's downfall, and he acted accordingly, and tried to end the life of even his own and only son. But, Arthur thinks, perhaps he was wrong. It could be any child. It needn't be Mordred. Fathering a son in incest is shame and punishment enough. Committing incest with that same son is even worse, and perhaps, even more fitting.

Mordred looks at him incredulously. 

“You really think I’d want that? You really think you want that you’d want that? My mother was right. You only think about yourself, and you just want to keep being the perfect king. But I could tell everyone about you, and you’re afraid of me. Arthur, King of the Britons, afraid of a landless knight, his son by incest.” 

Arthur hadn’t even considered that, this weapon Mordred holds. He knows his parentage. He’s slept with his father. If he wanted, Mordred could tell the whole kingdom that their glorious King Arthur was lustful and incestuous. And he wouldn’t be wrong. 

Mordred crawls from the bed, and fumbles in the darkness for his tunic, turning to leave. 

“Wait,” Arthur cries again, already knowing it will be in vain, not sure what else he will manage to say to his son. 

“Want to know a secret?” Mordred says from the door. “I liked it, every filthy, shameful moment of it. And I never want to see you again.” 

He leaves Arthur in the darkness, the oaken door slamming behind him. 

But the next morning, he is there in the hall. And all the while, he stares directly at Arthur, refusing to meet his gaze. 

**Author's Note:**

> Asking the mysterious young knight you met in the woods why he looks familiar might have been a good idea, Arthur. 
> 
> The sources here are kind of an ungodly mess of whatever Arthurian texts I felt like pulling things from, but it's about 25% Stanzaic Morte Arthure, 25% Tennyson, 20% Malory, and 30% assorted random Arthurian bits that piqued my interest/I remember from somewhere at some point. 
> 
> The hand stuff may be more than a little bit inspired by Arthur cutting off Mordred's sword hand in their final battle in the Alliterative Morte Arthure, but mostly I was just kind of into the irony of Arthur lavishing attention on the hand destined to deal his death blow. 
> 
> Anyhow, I absolutely adored your prompts, and hope you enjoy this. 
> 
> Title from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_.


End file.
